Breakfast of Champions

Since we're in Siem Reap for awhile (three weeks in one place being awhile at this point), we have been investigating our many different dining options. Looking for a local (and cheap) breakfast spot, we headed to the Samaki market not far from our guesthouse. We wandered for a bit through the outside fruit stands (tables shielded from the sun by plastic sheeting) into the relative cool of the inside part of the market (think warehouse). Here there are aisles full of everything from flashy gold bling and used fans to pyramids of fruits and vegetables. Among the squirming buckets of fish and the pungent stacks of dried fish, we see a table with plates and bowls of prepared food items that we suspect of being sweet and tasty. First, we pause and stare at the customers to try to determine what they are purchasing and how much they are paying. Then we take the plunge ourselves hoping we aren't buying something filled with meat or durian (a tropical fruit that has the smell and taste of something sweet but very rotten). We score! We enjoyed a breakfast of glutinous rice balls (tastier than it might sound) with fresh shredded coconut, a flat banana leaf-wrapped packet filled with sticky rice and sweet squash, and a banana leaf-wrapped roll of glutinous rice with banana.

Afterwards we headed to the market's cafe stalls in search of coffee. As in Vietnam and Laos, coffee is typically served strong over ice with a dollop of sweetened condensed milk though we opted for the extremely strong hot black coffee. The cafe we patronized was flanked by two identical ones -- each included a television installed in a metal cage playing the exact same program, Wrestling Smackdown! Truly a breakfast of champions!